


Training Manuvers

by sleepfighter



Category: Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor | Mobile Police Patlabor
Genre: Gen, Giant Robots, Nostalgia, Slice of Life, Training
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-22
Updated: 2011-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-27 21:01:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/300003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepfighter/pseuds/sleepfighter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not, as they say, the question of whether they are watching.</p><p>But what are they watching for?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Training Manuvers

**Author's Note:**

  * For [grey_sw (grey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/grey/gifts).



> Very slightly what-if: takes place in a not to distant future close to our own. Five ways to become a labor pilot, or not.

### (a. parenthetical.)

It is not, as they say, the question of whether they are watching.

But what are they watching for?

### I. S. O. P.

  


>   
> _STANDARD OPERATOR TRAINING: POLICE LABOR  
>  DIVISION 2 _
> 
> _SECTION ONE: REQUIRED CLASSIFICATIONS FOR DUTY  
>  All operators of a police labor, the type of which to be determined by division assignment (see section 2.12 for a preliminary examination on how labor types are assigned to divisions) must be able to do the following:_
> 
>  _\- be rated capable of basic movement in normal and severe weather conditions  
>  \- undergo basic combat and defense readiness training, and be signed off by their commanding and training officers  
> \- be assigned a position in the community for a length of no less than six months  
> \- perform the crowd control maneuvers outlined in section 3.16  
> \- undergo training for basic information systems, including those standard to lead-cars and labors  
> \- be conversant in basic L-OS communication techniques._

  


\- - - 

Goto has always been smart, sharp. Maybe a little quiet, in school, at home. He was always encouraged to speak clearly when he was called to speak, but when he does the whole class falls silent: there's something about his tone that the adults never hear, but his peers usually do.

He thinks about it as he's trading cigarettes behind the bleachers with the delinquents, as they skip out on English class together. "Now, these things'll kill you one day," he says as he blows the first puff out from his lips. "Better you shouldn't be smoking these things now, who knows what'll happen to your health?" They leer back at him as he inhales again, forcing back a cough.

"And you, professor?"

"Professor? Hardly." He smirks, but that's the hallmark of all the punk kids. And no one remembers it the next day when he's diligently attending a debate on poetry while the principal is chewing them out.

\- - - 

Ohta has known three things since he was old enough to articulate such things clearly. Not that he has never thought, as others have said, because there is nothing there to be said for mocking fools, but because while the concepts might be simple, that doesn't make them any less real to him.

First, he will be a man, because it may not be where the honor of others lies, but it is where his honor lies, and he's not going to compromise that. Secondly, he will be strong. Strength is something he can understand, even when everyone around him is talking, too fast, too loud, and too much to be of any use for anyone with wits. Thirdly, he will keep his word. Without the last one, the other two would not stand, and he'll fight anyone who challenges that.

He writes it on his entrance exam to the academy and though the writing is a little sloppy, it only lets the sincerity bleed a little more into the paper, or so he thinks. The instructors look at each other knowingly as they pass the paper around: he will be true to the force, for they can make this so for him, as he will do for them, and with that truth in mind, they have no problem sponsoring him.

\- - - 

Noa Izumi has been praised all her life for her enthusiasm, her willingness to learn, to cooperate.

She has been interested in labors, machines used for construction, for very many years. Her instructors said her tactics skills were lacking but with time, that would improve. Her fitness scores were among the top ten in her class. Nevertheless, she went to work in the traffic division for the first few years of her employment on the force, to gain the experience necessary to qualify for one of the urban labor enforcement divisions.

"Times change," Noa says, leaning against the wall outside of her parent's establishment. "And I want to help more people then the ones that are here. I think I could do something good." Her admirer, an old middle school classmate, sighs theatrically, but she's already left him in the dust ages ago, reaching for the city lights.

\- - - 

An heir? Work in the public sector? To help people? they ask. It will be part of your training, even if you get fast tracked into the Labors program. There is only so much we can do, after all, even for someone like…you. Related to your father, they do not add, earnestly.

Well, he says, it's not like he doesn't have some human resources experience before, and he smiles as the head of the review board seals and signs his form, welcoming Shinohara to the world of the police, not letting it slip that it was being a page for his uncle one summer. The crisp ruffle of paper as he touches the acceptance form doesn't cover up the echo of his father's shouting from the night before, but it helps.

\- - - 

She could see the future with clear eyes, as she looks at a magazine article talking about the upgrades in integrated systems that labor engineers had come up with. Tales of talking robots, machines that could move the earth, and that could show wonders.

Shinobu kept the magazine at her desk, until she made captain. And then, she pressed it into two frames, carefully, balancing them on her desk.

\- - - 

The police have always had a mixed billet, Goto reflected as he stretched out in the neighborhood police station between patrols. It was in some ways the most boring part of the whole process of training, but it was still required that every person serve in at least one other posting before they got to qualify for labor training.

He looked down at the log of activities: counting lines, thinking about rates of solved cases, and what the half off bento was for the evening.

Sometimes he would leave a little note for the day shift. Little riddles, pointed questions. Just between you and me, of course. He'd tally the results later, and if his numbers were good, maybe he'd treat himself to a beer afterwards.

### II. The Use of Labors In Society:

  


>   
> _  
> Labor use is important for a workforce that is aging, shrinking, one that is full of imagination and verve about how to make the future theirs._
> 
>  _Japan constructs its future with the two hands of every child, or so the economics minster proclaims at the latest technology summit, standing shoulder to shoulder with CEOs and CTOs and Diet members and investors, and it has never been truer._
> 
>  _The goal here is to be better, smarter than criminals. Mentally flexible, but friendly and accessible to the general public. But they're not the military._
> 
>  _This distinction has created more trouble than you might think._

  


\- - - 

When Ohta sees a Labor for the first time as a child, at his district's technical demonstration, staged so that people can see the wonders of the age, and marvel at the insights of their most intelligent, envy their skill, he watches it through the haze of thoughts, a rooster crowing in his ear, surely, no one can be stronger then these machines. He listens, rapt, to the demonstrator and thinks that he will teach his own labor, find in it the strength to protect everyone he's ever known. Especially those who do not have his inner strength of conviction to rely upon: We must be good to everyone, of course.

\- - - 

Shinobu came up in the force from behind. Slow, steady, competent, hours that could lay a lesser person flat in a week, and a deft hand with a piloting stick that anybody could envy, with a case record second to none. Her superiors were perplexed by her quiet insistence that she would prefer to work on Labors. Surely, they said, she would rather deal with something more down to earth? Something more, and they never said appropriate but she could read it on the way their tongues danced.

But what could be more relevant to the peace of a city then making sure that someone with my record and qualifications are in charge of something to showing the world that we have peace here, she countered? The work was clearly necessary to show our citizens that we are listening to their concerns so they might rest well at night, she said, and she would smile. And they would smile back and pat her hand and nod, and she would write another five letters and hold another six short carefully orchestrated personal meetings in headquarters before filing the paperwork from everyone to the beat cops to the administrators, and she would get her way. Sometimes.

She did not say, because if I am not the right person for the job, who is? But Goto could sometimes see it in her eyes as she leaned back in her chair, talking on the phone.

\- - - 

Ohta, quite frankly, could stand to sleep a little less soundly at night, for his roomate's health rather than anything else. He always looks so tired, Ohta thinks, as he gets ready for bed. But the thought fades as he closes his eyes.

\- - - 

Goto doesn't mind being captain of the second division. He laughs at anyone who calls it being second best. Says he sleeps better at night, doesn't have too much to worry about. Plus, he's the proud papa of a new fleet of labors, built from the ground up. Any man could rest well on that knowledge, he says.

Shinobu very kindly doesn't rat him out on the amount of times she finds him asleep in his chair after their longest missions. The kettle is an adequate alarm, she finds, for these situations.

\- - - 

There's something about Shinohara's father's face when they talk about the company over stilted weekend dinners that neither of them do more then pick at, that lets him know this isn't the end of it, anyway. He didn't build the family business up from the slumps of the oughts, the teens, to let one wayward son's ideals of helpfulness in the public sector let him stray for too long.

He dismisses the thought again, concentrating on the flow of information from his father's tongue, rather than the hard curl of the lips that shape it.

\- - - 

Noa doesn't mind the rhythm of working in her family's bar. Indeed, it is as clear to her as any dance she has ever been in, or race. There is a pattern to all human movement that is as evident to her, and it's not like they mean it if they're drunk. They're just trying to relax a little, and that's good for them. She's charming, and she's a girl; when she's 14, 15, 16, she's slipped shots and sips, and she goes along with it with the grace that it's offered, and feels the warmth slip down her throat, spread amongst her and her dance.

* * *

### III. Uniform code.

Goto gets more demerits than anyone else in his first year academy class for not keeping his uniform just so. When his training sergeant asks him if he's _trying_ to find a new way to get demerits, he just blinks. But his uniform is utterly unremarkable after that.

\- - - 

He never asked his father to stand at his shoulder as he walks for the door to his graduation from police academy. Shinohara can't decide if the taste in his mouth is victory, or something a little bit sour.

\- - - 

Noa wears the uniform of a female traffic enforcer without complaint when she is on duty: it is the work that matters, not the presentation or the fact that she will be judged by it. It doesn't stop her from dancing where she needs to, either.

\- - - 

If anyone was any less connected to the earth than a hundred ton robot with an operator who had to walk and lift and stretch in the same world as everyone else, with the same machine tolerances that every engineer had to deal with, Shinobu wasn't sure who that person would be.

But maybe someday she'd meet them, she thought, as she ran through the proposed specs with the technicians and company representatives, for the third time.

\- - - 

 

Ohta keeps his hair and sides a little long: it brings him a little bit closer to looking like the samurai in the dramas. It's never too out of order, and he trims it before all official reviews, so his sergeants let it slide.

### IV. Artificial intelligence and you: a introductory course.

  


>   
> _SHINOHARA HEAVY INDUSTRIES  
>  Alphonse Police Labor Manual, Page 125  
> A Brief Introduction to LaborOS_
> 
>  _LaborOS (referred to hereafter as L-OS) is equipped with the finest in Learning Logistics software as designed by name of programmer, in conjunction with the University of Tokyo's Computer Science department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University. An expert learning system, packaged with the latest in law enforcement tactics as designated by the Japanese National Police Commission and tested with Patlabor Division 1._
> 
>  _The installation of L-OS is designed to adapt to your movements as you perform them while training and on the field, analyzing your common tasks. In time, the L-OS will be capable of anticipating your movements and executing them at higher speeds and with precise force. These movements can be saved as a template. All L-OS installations also comes with an onboard suite of preloaded situational movement sets for training, movement templates for emergency pilot switching, and many other uses. It is the most flexible intelligence on the market today!_
> 
>  _In addition, the tactical suite allows the integration of several key networks via module additions to your force's instillation. A representative from Shinohara Heavy Industries will walk you through the options for telemetry data, communications, positioning software, helper shell personalization..._

As part of the basic police training, they are told to be mindful. Observation is key to your training. It is not until you are balancing a half pound box of plastic and sensors just so on your shoulders for minutes, then hours and finally days at a time that you think about how intimately it is now applied to you. This will be the tabula rasa of the movement between you and your labor: yours, and no one else's. You could use others, but yours should be the key that works best.

But when you press it into the heart of a labor, and feel how it moves under your feet, then the moment becomes transcendent. At least, that's what the instructors say to calm the rookies as they clip the box to their vests. No one talks about the other uses for the data, how it could be used to replace a limb, or how some folks have to retrain their keys.

Everyone talks about how everyone else's first time went; no one talks about their own.

Ohta manages to keep his balanced like a chip on his shoulder. It was, he said, all in the mind, just as the instructors said. His friends snorted, but he passed the analysis later, and that was all that mattered. He swears, quite earnestly, that with enough hard work, his efficiency scores will match someday soon.

He moves with a suddenness that could be mistaken for rushing ahead, and is strength of purpose, or so he says. But he does not fall, just.

Noa wears hers like a proud badge and it lies against her bones as she dances under it, no matter how many hands push her about.

She tries to float through those weeks carefully. When she slides through the paces of the first course, she's convinced she's going to have to go through the course again, until she can see the face of her instructor.

Shinohara wears his like a stoic. He's more graceful then anyone really expects, but who else would be so good at grace under fire?

He ignores everyone that whispers that he cheated, that he knew already. It's true that he's sat in a cockpit before, but with the effort it took to get this far, he doesn't think that this is too much of an advantage at all.

Goto set records for how often he lost his, but for all of that, his labor could move with a smooth and sudden grace in his hands.

His instructors wonder at his grace, but he responds to all their questions with a very brief smile, and a simple answer of, "I moved the way you taught me to." They take him at his word.

Shinobu wears hers sedately enough, most of the time: it, too, has the good sense to follow the way she moves, and when she glides forward the first time, she allows herself a wide smile.

Hers is the piloting of a pilot who has worked quite hard for their efforts, and she practices with a diligence that few of her classmates can manage.

\- - - 

  


### V. Advanced users course.

  


>   
> _Each labor pilot of the police course will spend the second half of their training in developing their own specialization, as well as spending no less than four weeks every year in refreshment and refinement courses. Officers may also be detached to pursue their specialties' experts from other countries and services, and in turn may also host fellow officers from the same._
> 
>  _Anyone who is in command of a division or higher must also pursue an extra week per year of leadership training and another in either legal matters or logistics every other year._
> 
>  _Engineers must also undergo review every year, and rectify every three to five years, depending on their certification._

  


\- - - 

In training, they are taught first how to breathe: calm is key to ensuring that a situation will go smoothly for all involved. It is accompanied soon after by how to step, and how to hold your body just so. The carriage of a Labor pilot is unmistakable to the trained eye.

Then they learn how to speak to their key, and their world starts to sound different to them, too.

You didn't name your key, at least not publicly. There were journals, and books, and articles about over identification of what was essentially government property. You didn't modify your key either, for much the same reasons.

But a nickname, well. Everyone turned a blind eye to those.

\- - - 

Noa called her labor after the manufacturer's call name—that isn't a name, properly, she said to her advanced piloting instructor, and he nodded, satisfied that he wouldn't have to give out that lecture again. But it had a life of its own at any rate in her mouth. But she couldn't call her partner anything less, and that's what Alphonse was, no more and no less. Because together, they moved.

She polished the surface of her Alphonse in her downtime: not like how she would for a pet, but for a friend who needed it. Because partners were that too.

Noa speaks to her key, bubbly and bright, and coaxes it to respond to her cheerful words in much the same tone. Her instructors insist on leaving the basic script unmodified, but cheerful persistence takes its toll.

 

\- - - 

Ops was a required track, the theory of which had been dictated by the great minds in charge of the training of all. All pilots should be capable of both, even though each unit would determine the aptitude of each candidate individually, and rotating people until they fit. It was the pride of the trainers that allowed them to put out parts that fit exceptionally in many places. After all, the ability to read sensor nets, to tweak programs until they sang under the hand of the users, was a skill that could be useful in anyone.

Still, there were some that took to it like they didn't the controls: they spoke to their machines, taught their keys to respond to their voices, to look in ways and places that human eyes could not. And a well trained data key could be as every bit as valuable as a key well trained in the movement of labors, if not more so. Data packages were introduced all the time...but true operators would control their personal keys, and the keys of the pilots under their command with the zealousness of priests. The results were unquestionable.

Being a ops operator isn't a mark of shame for anyone else, really: he's heard the comparison that it's not unlike being a spotter for a sniper. A little bit like being handler for a dog, too. But Shinohara prefers to think of it as being the hand in the glove. As the captain says with a little smile to him while they're in his office together, what better chance to practice then now? It's blunter than any other challenge that he's gotten in his life, but he thinks it'll do.

Sometimes he dreams that he's talking to his father, through his key, and wakes up to find himself clutching at the box. He could check the logs, but he never does. This is a key that will never talk to his father, or disclose his secrets to his father's engineers, and that's enough for him.

\- - - 

Deep down, Ohta knows that he's just another body on the line, a tool in the hands of his superiors, and it's made worse when his . But when he's down at the training range, none of that matters. He is a tool, and he will sharpen himself.

He focuses on the power of the gun and hands, and fires, and it's like being held by the gods.

Ohta speaks with the same unselfconsciousness with which he proclaims everything to his key, and his key learns to respond back with a firm tone, to make him take notice. He still has the lowest synch rate, but it climbs a little every ear.

\- - - 

Command track is a good way to meet death by paperwork, even in the schools. The tomes are a mismatch of eras, philosophies, documents of various classifications, and the reports to be generated from the above. Worse, the newest textbooks were always the most confused and contradictory, and make for the longest time spent reading to writing the reports.

Still, it was a necessary evil in the eyes of the superiors, and every captain suffered through them stoically together, and through the interminable retraining seminars, twice a year, and celebrated by getting smashed as soon as possible afterwards. The blackmail opportunities could be legendary.

Commanders are allowed a little more leeway with their keys: they choose the buildout for their teams, and can frequently justify modifications under efficiency tests.

Goto's is frequently silent to all but the most discerning eye: it is the rare person who realizes that the captain can understand Morse code.

Shinobou's talks with a clear, tenor voice: she works with it to get it to display just the right amount of information, when requested. No more, and no less.

\- - - 

Shinobu never did Goto the disservice of underestimating him. He found he didn't mind so much, after all. It was good if someone knew you.

Goto never fooled her. A lifetime of dealing with men in power, a lifetime of dealing with those who thought they knew the realities of what makes human beings tick best have prepared her to do battle with those who deserve it and smile softly at those who are unworthy. Her smile is her best weapon in her arsenal, right behind her softest rebuke, which Division One members know better than to cringe from, mostly.

They sat together in taxis after the latest parties of their peers, back to their base, and when Shinobu mentioned, offhand, that she though the wind would die down the next day, Goto smiled back, and said that it would be a fine day.

### VI. conduct.

  


>   
> _Fraternization is disallowed as it is disallowed in every other type of unit, but really, so far, it's the unit with the least amount of that particular problem._
> 
>  _(Or at least it's the unit that has the least amount of trouble keeping it to itself, either which way.)_

  


\- - - 

It's not that Noa's never ever thought about boys: it's just been a concept that she's never really felt the need to worry about too hard. Boys can wait their turn, and if they won't wait, they're not worth it to her, right?

Slow and steady is probably the way to the top.

\- - - 

Ohta isn't against girls, per se, but he hasn't found one that finds him inexhaustibly charming, and he's not sure he'd settle for anything less.

Still, he's not blind to the feminine charms of his colleagues, and he's not made of stone, and will say as much to prove it. But these things have their rules.

\- - - 

Shinohara is a little wary of dating a girl after the last one threw her glass of water in his face after she heard about the fight with his father. He'd just like a little loyalty, that's all he's saying.

\- - - 

Goto smiles at his date across the table. "Well, I suppose it's an important job, but really, what matters to me is the chance to get to know the community." His mild smile doesn't twitch at her yawn, but really, it's a delicate balance, the frisson between just interesting enough to not dismiss, but so boring that he's not obligated to go on more then a date or three. He's got a reputation to maintain after all. And boring is better than being slapped, although for some girls...mm, well, that'd be worth it, he's just saying.

\- - - 

Shinobu smiles at the company rep, nods slightly, although it doesn't match her eyes. "I'm sorry, I'm going to be very busy with reviewing these incident reports—it's been an eventful week, you understand. Perhaps later." She's careful not to slam the office door behind her as he leaves.

"Trouble at the office, dear?" Goto asks her as she turns towards her desk. His nose is buried in his newspaper, but there's a steaming hot cup of tea on her desk, by the reports.

"Nothing a little bit of pest control can't fix," she says, letting the representative's card fall from her hand into the waste paper basket by her desk. "Don't you think sitting like that will throw your back out?"

Goto sighs, and doesn't shift much, but his spine is a little straighter. "Ah, if you say so."

### VII. A day in the office.

In the morning, Shinobu is first into the captain's office. She turns on the lights, docks her key in its base, waking her computer, and flicks the switch on the electric teakettle in that order, and watches Sakai rail against his subordinates as they open the doors to the Labor hanger. A trickle of pilots pour out of the building, going on their daily run as the kettle whistles, and she turns herself to the making of tea. Two cups are ready when Goto comes back, e-cig (less satisfying, but much less cancerous then the real thing, the advertisements say, and more importantly, it doesn't set off the fire alarms installed by their superiors) tucked between his lips. He breaks open the bakery bag, and there's just enough time for a bun and tea before it's time to go to the business of the day, starting with paperwork.

Ohta puffs against the air as that chit of a girl—how does Izumi do it?—gains a few more feet ahead of him. Shinohara does his best not to laugh as they pull into the building. A low, deep voice, lurking on Ohta's shoulder reminds them they have one more mile to run in the next twenty minutes, and an hour in all before the daily briefing, and Ohta wails as he pulls himself forward.

Today's schedule calls for sensor training in the nearby woods, as long as they're not interrupted by a runaway labor, or a kitten in a tree, or a landslide. The sky is a flat, metallic grey that may never clear up, but the future is still shining out there.

They may not be living their lives by the manuals, per se, but they were never written for this anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I have a very, very deep yen for a certain kind of AI story. I also kind of love gigantic robots, futures, and societies: Patlabor has that in plenty, but we're ten years beyond its wildest dreams. When I was told to go wild, this is the story that resulted.
> 
> A great many thanks to my friends, to #yuletide and all its variants that sat through me thinking through this thousand times over. Thanks also go to ysadrel, for the usual services of me pestering him about things I can never remember, like math and computer theory. Lastly, a great many thanks to oddplaces and MarsDragon for sitting through my, gods save us all, grammer and spelling: what you see before you is better due to their foresight.


End file.
